A blog dedicated to New Jersey Education Aid, titled ‘Exposing the Savage Inequalities of New Jersey’s Education Aid Distribution’, ran the following extensive report last week – and submitted to TLS – about Lakewood’s school budget disaster.
Next year Lakewood is facing a $12 million deficit on an operating school budget that is only $120.8 million. To resolve the huge deficit, Lakewood is laying off 68 teachers, pushing average class size up to FORTY. In addition to the 68 teacher layoffs, Lakewood will lay off three guidance counselors, cut sports, cut middle school clubs, cut late busses, and eliminate courtesy bussing.
I don’t use the word “disaster” lightly, but I’ll use it for Lakewood because there is no other word.
Of the many growing NJ districts who are nevertheless forced to cut teachers, Lakewood stands out as perhaps still the worst-off situation because Lakewood’s total spending and classroom spending are already among the lowest in New Jersey. Lakewood’s classroom spending is currently 12th from the bottom, but after this round of cuts sets in for 2016-17 it may be in absolute last place.
Since Lakewood’s students are classified as 87% FRL eligible and 28% Limited English, a budget that would be inadequate for a middle-class district is even more inadequate for a district like Lakewood.
New Jersey has many underaided districts and Lakewood is certainly underaided (officially by $19.3 million, or $3,049 per student for opex aid and another $2 million for Extraordinary Aid), but the complexity of Lakewood is that SFRA does not work for Lakewood in the first place and even if Lakewood (by some miracle), got its full uncapped aid, it would still be in severe budgetary stress.
Lakewood’s Underaiding
The factor most commonly always blamed for Lakewood’s budget crisis is Lakewood’s Orthodox majority and their representatives on the Lakewood BOE. While I don’t claim that everything Lakewood’s BOE does is right, to exclusively blame the BOE or the Orthodox majority is ignorant of multiple other factors, primarily that Lakewood’s tax levy is above its Local Fair Share and that its official state aid deficit is $19.3 million.
Lakewood should be getting $6,955 per student in state aid, but in reality it only gets $3,906 per student. The $3,049 per student aid deficit places Lakewood in the state’s bottom 15% for underaiding.
The $6,955 aid target is actually low for a district with Lakewood’s demographics. For instance, Freehold Boro’s aid target is $13,342 per student and Dover’s is $13,655.
Lakewood’s aid target is low because Lakewood’s student population is very small proportionally and Lakewood thus has an above-average per student tax base. Lakewood’s tax base is not spectacular, but it is approximately equal to Metuchen’s and Haddonfield’s, though spread out among a much larger, poorer population. Read the full report here.
Being that it’s illegal to not educate your child, the state needs to decide:a) are the private schools giving education,if yes, pay them per student, or b) if private schools are not giving “education” force them to give education ( and get paid per student)
Only one comment I can make . So where does this get us to ? Talk talk talk … Why is it that not one state level politician even feels the need to make it sound like this concerns them
I’m the author of the blog post.
Where does this get us?
I take things one step at a time. The first step towards reforming state aid in New Jersey is make more people aware of how unfair and irrational the aid distribution is.
My post was narrowing on Lakewood’s underaiding and the nonapplicability of SFRA to Lakewood, but I’ve written A LOT about overaided districts and how Adjustment Aid (the main mechanism of overaiding) are rarely poor, needy places.
http://njeducationaid.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-most-overaided-districts-in-nj-or.html
Do you think it’s fair that there are 200 districts who get 100% or more of their uncapped aid while 141 get not even 50% and the most underaided district (Chesterfield) gets only 9%?
Do you think it’s fair that Hoboken gets more money per student than Lakewood even though Hoboken is NJ’s richest K-12 district in tax base?
Do you think it’s fair that Jersey City gets $130 million MORE than SFRA says it needs? (despite having $9 billion in “invisible” PILOTed property)
Do you think it’s fair that Asbury Park’s excess aid is nearly $11,000 per student? An amount that equals or exceeds the total spending of districts like Clifton, Fairview, East Newark, and Lakewood?
I agree that most of NJ’s politicians are indifferent to state aid, but that’s because their constituents are too! Most politicians themselves don’t understand state aid and how the distribution is completely unfair.
If enough people demanded of their legislators and the governor change the state aid distribution you’d see movement.
There’s already a little hope. Sens Jennifer Beck and Stephen Sweeney are pro-reform and the fact that Stephen Sweeney supports reform makes it viable, since he is the Senate President.
There are real obstacles to reform out there (cough ), but there is also a chance for progress. Don’t give up and don’t think you can’t do anything.
Thank you stateaideguy my comment was not directed at you per se but at a situation where a state can have one of the highest property tax rates in the nation and choose not to spend them on the citizens but rather only to serve the interest groups that like this convoluted system . I agree with the first commentor if private schools are qualified as educational institutions them they should be fully funded per student equitably with public school students . How hard can it be to wrap someone’s head about the idea that ALL citizens even those that choose to educate privately are equal before the law
To stateaidguy thank you for your report, and in pointing out what Lakewood residents intuitively knew.
The scary thing is, why are Lakewood’s State Representatives not pushing the issue? Why does the press keep pushing the false narrative of blame it on the Orthodox Jews?
Why not a good lawyer with a a good lawsuit
I second Louis. Let’s pay a top notch lawyer to file a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the state.
MrStateAid is that an option?
Abe:
That’s not grounds for a suit, unfortunately.
Advocating that the state should allow for a school district to be able to create it’s own school choice program (tax credit or voucher) may be an option. A school district in Colorado did this successfully (until the courts stopped it for a reason that would not apply in NJ). Doing so, successfully, would (potentially) trigger per pupil state aid for all students in the district. Then, students could choose to use the funds the district allocates at a school of their choice, public or private. Thats the way to respect local control and ensure that every parent and every child accesses a great education.
Lakewood has been part of a funding lawsuit called the “Bacon Case” since 1997. (it is named for the figuiehead plaintiff whose name is first alphabetically.)
The goal of the Bacon case is to Abbottize the plaintiff districts. So far only one of the Bacon districts, Salem City, has become an Abbott.
I think Lakewood should use a political strategy, not a legal strategy. Lakewood is the largest non-Abbott in New Jersey and is politically cohesive. Lakewood will be on every gubernatorial candidate’s radar. When those candidates come to Lakewood make more state aid Lakewood’s #1 issue.
Steve Sweeney is good on aid, but Fulop supports the unjust status quo and Phil Murphy doesn’t care. Make Fulop and Murphy know how unfair the distribution is and how Lakewood’s schools need more state aid desperately.
http://www.edlawcenter.org/cases/bacon-overview.html
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/11/rural_nj_schools_lose_appeal_for_more_funding.html
Well simply put if it’s a political strategy that’s needed it would be to find and fund a campaign to supplant them with a more just candidate
I have a question: The author notes in his article that the Lakewood public school population is growing. I have a hard time understanding why that is occurring. Generally, as time goes on, I would assume it should go down as many houses that were formerly lived in by public school families are now lived in by private schooll families.
And here is my questions: does the BOE do any checking to ensure that when a student enrolls he actually lives within Lakewood? Is it possible that there are students from other towns (for example, a Hispanic student who may want to take advanatge of Lakewood’s many bi-lingual teachers) enrolling? In Neptune, they are strict about monitoring this.
Someone, help me undersatnd this.